You may have noticed me using phrases like ''insults to humanity'' and ''embarrassments to human civilisation'' when referring to people like Farage or Trump, and I just want to elaborate a bit on what I mean by that. I honestly believe those men embarrass and insult human civilisation. They seem to me to run counter to everything I value in humanity: things like kindness, tolerance and selflessness, which make the world worth living on. These men intend to reverse the progress humanity has made over the last seventy years: they would turn us all into greedy nationalists; blind, unthinking patriots who place our own wants and needs over those of others; and who unthinkingly accept the dogma that one's own country is somehow innately superior to another, and that ''foreigners'' are to be viewed as competitors, or not trusted altogether. The only way we can solve the problems of the world is if we work together, putting individual and national differences aside - albeit still valuing that which makes us unique - and work together in equality. To advocate the opposite, to ferment division and contempt between peoples as Trump and Farage do, to value competition and hierarchy over collaboration and equality, is an insult to civilisation itself.

I firmly believe these two men embarrass us all, and bring us all down. They blight us. Just think of what we are capable of: spaceflight; the world wide web. But such awesomeness only comes about when humanity puts our petty differences aside and work as one. Yet Trump and farage would have us all thinking in terms of ''me! Me! Me!'' They don't want humanity to work together; they don't want us to care about anyone but ourselves. They want greed alone to drive us, and seek to achieve their goals through the most cynical, disgusting forms of lying and manipulation.

We should all be embarrassed that such vile, shortsighted men have risen to such prominence. We're better than that - better than the hatred they spew or the greed and intolerance they stand for. Human civilisation is something noble, but Trump and Farage would drag it back into the gutter. That's what I mean when I call such men ''embarrassments'' or ''insults to human civilisation'', for, as loathe as I am to presume to speak for all humanity, they stand for things we, as a species, should all be ashamed of.